Lots of postings (insights,debates, trends and questions) are being made at Toostep. However, it is obvious that some of these postings are irrelevant and are of no use or interest to many of the members. In some cases it is not properly presented and sometimes you are at a loss to figure out what the writer is trying to say. In view of these observations the questions that comes to mind are (1) Is there a moderator at Toostep? (2) Should these postings be vetted before they are published on the site? and (3) Should there be a limitation of posts to be made by individuals?
It will be interesting to hear your views on this.
This is a
professional website and all postings made should in one way or the
other be beneficial to members. The continuation of irrelevant postings flooding the site will distract some members from participating. My belief is there should be a moderator who will vet these postings before it is published to avoid criticisms. Also there should be a limitation to the number of posts made by members every week or maybe every month.
It is very boring to see one set of people making several postings and comments when there are thousands of members on the site.
Once we have moderator, it also means like going back to school days. Remember moniter of the class. We (too step memebers) have crossed all the thresholds & limitations of learning. Now the learning process is more of a knowledge give and take. At too step we are all professionals with good qualifications. so the debate is result of our experience and knowledge.Also debate generated here at toostep is often very good and logical. But at times it takes a turn to emotional outburst.
Let us have guidelines...too much of dos and dont,s will spoil the fabric of basic argumentive nature..of this community users.
Arguments and counter arguments is the debate...
Few gudelines is all we need...common minimum programme..What say?
I shall list the guidelines, which I feel are relevant in such a open debate forum.
Of course my suggestions / guidelines are open to all kinds of mature and sensible suggestions by all our toostep members.
As to answer your question directly. We all must participate in choosing the guidelines as we all will be involved in following them.
And as a friend and fellow toostep member, let us all stop giving knee-jerk reactions. Let wisdom previal!!
In school we did not have democracy...we were attended to and were looked after hiercharcy of principal, teachers & moniters.Moniters helped the teacher to look after the class. Since we were kids.
But know we are a responsible, grown, matured and educated adults. So We need guidelines.
This is very strange. I posted this debate and am very pleased about the response. However, I am very disappointed that only one of my questions have been answered, instead they were given thumbs down. This is not how a debate is done. There must be rebound and also one must support their argument if a question or a query is raised.
I know several platforms who have lost professional interest because it was found that one or some of the few happened.
Two members argued with each other with no respect or regard for others in the community.
Some people posted comments that were in bad taste.
Some people just did not answer questions but moulded the direction to suit their personal interest or to advertise their services at the most irrelevant manner.
If this place is meant for experts, their must be moderation so that meaningful discussion only is maintained. I guess most experts have paucity of time.
I guess the question is same as "Do we really want experts to go through irrelevant directionless content"? or "do we want to just cut the waste and me productive most of the time"?
PS - I am sure we all understand that healthy arguements and counter-arguments are fine as long as they add value.
Well moderated postings will certainly eliminate irrelevant postings. Too much of screening, however, will take away the sheen of the portal and will result in reduction in traffic. Let the filtering process take place if someone objects to the postings for irrelevancy.
Also to note is that if we consider ourselves professional why do we doubt about content being deleted or not published unless you (generally speaking, includes me too) know that your content was meant to damage something or some view OR the comment was initiated through simple malice OR someone wanted to get back because of a thumbs down. Filtering comments will only ensure a good argyment or an irrelevant argument thats all!! :))
SR Sham Sundar, I have read the post you mentioned. However, I have one question for you' Would you feel good to see many irrelevant postings made at Toostep?
Hari, while I agree moderating may lead to lesser posting, I am not sure if it may mar the actual essence of Toostep. How do you suggest we report and to whom will we report any type of posts as irrelevant? Do you really think many people would vote against irrelevant posting?
Well it seems as though this is a case of 'old habits die hard' and once a man twice a child. Some people just cannot accept advice and can be very annoying . Mr. Dikshit, deleted his comment which I think is good since he does not ever respond to any query. However, I think it is very childish of him to rate all of my comments in this debate thumbs down without giving a reason.
Thanks everyone who has to date contributed to the debate.
A debate must have two(2) sides, some supporting, some opposing. If not, as my friend Makrand would agree no debate should be one-sided.
Moderators are like a CENSOR Board. They MONITOR content, language and quality of pots, comments and debates! Moderator allows usage of certain words on a platform like this.
Just like we have SPAM filters on our email accounts, the MODERATOR FILTERS the content added and publishes only the content that is really RELEVANT and has the quality that befits the forum and its cause! Every social platform has the use of moderarots to maintain celibacy and sanity. Otherwise you will have no differentiation left into profanity and abuse at all. And here, on such professional platforms, whether everybody denies it or not, the idea of rating a comment nd debate with a thumbs up / down is what gets to people. Everybody would like to see the green thumb against their name and comments. Its a way to assert a thought process and the fact that it is ACCEPTED on platforms like these!!
Believe me it ha sa HUGE meaning!! So a MODERATOR on such platforms eases the use of language, filters abuse and profanity and allows ONLY QUALITY CONTENT TO BE READ!!
Mr. Dikshit, your comment is very sarcastic. As a senior person you should not make such comments. May I know what you mean by 'This debate is also irrelevant to fulfill one's egos'? This is a professional site where all postings are read by many.
I am supporting this side because, people continuously posting irrelevant content/ unstructured / unclear ideas/ redundant topics will stop potential readers to visit the platform.
As far I understood in Toostep, posting is centralized, any toostep users can post an article unlike linkedin
But there ways to restrict users
Posting to the particularly community not to all communities (so moderator have rights to screen)
According to the points gained by the profile, number of posting to be defined
Any toostep user can award negative points to the spammers, so that they can’t do many posting as they were doing earlier
However these things are very common in networking platform, we have to tolerate this
Even democracy needs checks and balances, Rights balanced by duties. Members are not self-regulating themselves; hence the need for moderation. And, Suchita, there is never any limitation to how much one can learn.
I agree that there is need of moderator as we see lot of common postings which are there on all the popular communities and some times they have irrelevant to the topic. However we for now dont have any control to filter the postings :(
Yes Viktor. There should be a minimum stipulation on inactive members. But then if they have more than compensated with GOOD commenting or ideas, they should be judged on the levels of their acceptance on this toostep platform by member which the moderator can easily track!!
Great thought Devi.....Definitely we need a moderator to an extent......
There is so much happening here. TooStep should come up with a moderator, may be from users itself such that the vast knowledge items are having sanity in the discussions. At the same time let us not have huge constraints for other professionals too because it will jeopardize the entire show, there should be free flow of information.
Let us inform the user itself who has posted the irrelevant stuff & report abuse it such that TooStep can take action.
Why only postings even answers or comments need to be screened before being published. In terms of limitations, I am not so sure as we are also a kind of Social platform. It would be advisable to ignore some things that do not appeal to your mind at all. But a moderator is definitely necessary!
Good debate Ms. Kaladeen and thanks for the referral :)
Once the person gets a deffinite number of points, he should automatically come into a circle where fillterings are compulsary. Otherwise, as Deviji said, unnecessaru floodings will happen.
But, meanwhile, it should not become such that all the postings are 'Openions' or 'Views' of moderators. If moderators feel that the topic, postings etc are not worthwhile and the topic is a burning topic, then it would be unpublished....
It is always good to have standards but the standards should have good calibrations and should be accepted, then it would get automatically converted into the SYSTEM.
It is true. With great respect to the contributors, it is always possible that some mistakes creep in. In such a vast platform, some unwanted pieces of writing may also find entry.
While free discussion should be encouraged, some careless and unwarranted remarks may offend a scholar, who would prefer to stay away from the site, rather than stirring up a heated argument.
The presence of a balanced moderator would help all the participants in maintaining focus on relevant themes and enhance the professional merits of the site.
Moderators are required only for those who are worried too much about thumbs down. But the silver lining is they also get a plenty of thumbs up whe they start fighting over it leaving the topic aside.
it is obvious that some of these postings are irrelevant
I agree
In some cases it is not properly presented and sometimes you are at a loss to figure out what the writer is trying to say.
I Agree but in India, many can not communicate effectively in English. We have all learnt to look for the meaning the communicator intended. Of course, we do not expect this from you. Please ask a question if any post is unclear. We will all answer you.
(1) Is there a moderator at Toostep?
I Think Toostep have retained their hold on what we post. However, their commercial interests suggest that they are benefited with larger participation. They would perhaps exercise their right very selectively
(2) Should these postings be vetted before they are published on the site?
This would remove the charm of Toostep. I appreciate your view point but my experience is that people tend to be prejudiced if they are given an absolute right.
I have however suggested that if a member finds a post as "offensive", there should be a panel of experts to review the post. If they really find it offensive, it should be deleted.
and (3) Should there be a limitation of posts to be made by individuals?
If we come over the tendency to score points, I think Toostep members will be able to make meaningful contributions
And all who have supported my debate. If any toostep member find and irrelevant article or posting. Let us stop giving arguments or comments on such debate.
If no posting, no hungama. I feel even we should not give refferals of such question, articles or posts.
I do agree with Devi, that sometimes people are posting some stuff which is not that much worth and good.
But talking about a moderator to control or check on posting is not that good idea.
Because here we can see many people are those who really want to share their views on this network but when it come to face to face interaction many are not that much confident......and Too step here is giving them a great platform to open up.
If we make any moderator to control some comments then these people who have great ideas will stop posting there comments in the fear of rejection.
Right now everybody is free and posting there ideas, comments with full freedom and by having a controller means controlling the views and ideas.
And for the unwanted or meaningless posts.......if we don't respond to the posting the respected author will come to know that people do not like his/ her posts. He himself will take care of it next time.
PUNIT, Guyana's constitution gives me the right to express my thoughts but I will choose which forum to say what. Further I will do it in a dignified manner.
Devi, If you were to post 10 relevant posts that interests me, I would respond to every one of them. That is an assurance. It depends on the nature of post made and the interest and knowledge that I posses in the subject to be able to comment / argue / debate on that.
Devi, We can have a system by which we report to the staff at Toostep. Moderating on all content to be posted or that have been posted can mean biased editing. Moderators may have different views and tastes than the general members of Toostep. If there existed a rule book that says that every post needs to satisfy every clause of the rule book, then a moderator may be useful as he could simply use the rule book against each post. Else, every decision of trimming that goes through by the moderator may or may not be in general acceptance of the masses. That is my personal take on the argument.
And when people can rate thumbs down to lot of arguments, and if we have such a facility for all posts, why would they not rate on the posting too?
Moderating may lead to lesser posting which may mar the actual essence of Toostep. We could in turn have some way of reporting any type of posts as irrelevant and then the posting can be removed subject to many people voting against it. Any other thoughts?
First and foremost, not to take anything personally..
Anybody,s views are not a direct attack to that person, but opposition to that,s persons views.
In any debate reference to Religion, Gender, Sexuality & Race by any communitiy member does not mean opposition to other religion, gender,sexuality & race.
This debates or arguments and counter arguments are not done to vent our anger or frustrations at large. This site is not for that.
This site is place for knowledge intersection and meeting likeminded people.
Since all too communitiy members are born at different places, been raised with different school of thoughts, moulded by different life and professinal experience in life. So it perfect that any argument or counter argument is observation of that individual so far...that individual has undergone.
So you "man are like that" or you "women think that way" does not mean attack on whole of women folk at large or men folk at large.
Here we are educated, professi0nal and knowledge empowered individuals. so we must be able to handle democracy responsibly .
The censorship always was a very great danger for the democracy and it can put the freedom at risk.
The articles (insights,debates, trends and questions) without interest will be alone for itself “eliminated”
To its authors, in case that they make it for mere provocation to a work/interchange that if he intends healthful, only remains to them, with the time to give up so pernicious and useless exercise of “mere dullness".
However on behalf of be that as it may if it can allow that the censorship if installs sub-repticiamente.
It's a danger with a very high price to pay.
In democracy, the penalty that are permissible to apply in such cases, is the adjusted reply, or the indifference to such articles for not the voting the favour or against
I have indicated that "irrelevant" should not be the cause for deletion. However, "Offensive" is definitely a cause for deletion of the post.
I have requested for a subject review panel - either elected or nominated. This will consider a post, if any toostep member refers a post for review, which in his view, is "offensive".
If we consider irrelevance as a cause for deletion, too many posts will get lost. The promoters of toostep may not like this as it may not serve their purpose.
In any case, Communities have a moderator. This community concept in Toostep is too hazy. We wish to submit an article within the community and the article gets listed elsewhere. If we go to a community, we feel we can come across all information but we will never be able to access relevant information of that community. Articles posted in that community are absolute non sense for that particular community. Even the start up window for communities shows an article of interest but if you try to click it, you will never find that article and something else comes up.
I request toostep promoters to review the community page.
Within the community, however, the moderator can throw out an article as "irrelevant" which can be listed outside communities
As far my view, one must have freedom for sharing any no. of knowledgeable articles.
As we know toostep family consist of professional from no. of industries/areas/fields etc. And on different times different ideas strikes in mind and on the same time one wants share that wonderful information with all. Moderation is just required to control and removing the redundency issues that arise.
Censorship is not required.........One person can take care if the knowledge is posted in correct community and it is not vulgar or abusive in nature........If any post gets more thumbs down than that post/comment can be removed from the site automatically.......
At this stage of life self controlling is the moderate way to operate in every walk of life. if you required regulations for every walk of life how we cancall our self educated prudent. Ithink we must move from the legal soicety to Civil society where every body have their own prudenciality to regulate affairs.
It is not necessary for a moderator to vet everthing being posted, and there should be no limitations to contributions, as it would defeat the purpose of free independent thoughts. Members choose their own groups and they can anytime leave them as per the model. It is upto you to decide which debate to participate into. Check RTI-ACT.. This platform is handled by professionals, not under -graduates! Moreover even if we have moderator, how will he decide which burning topic suits your choice or others? Will that be his choice?
We need a debate on: how to select a moderator and what should be his actions towards groups or ppl acquiring more expert badges.. rather than directly having a gatekeeper to stop crowd from entering..! i believe..
Also about inactive users: nobody can make them participate, as it is their wish not to spend time on this platform. Check your contacts, most of them don't spend much time either.. So let the feedom of thoughts flow as it is.. selection of participation, choosing a topic is on one's discreation..
I agree with Suchita. Most members on the forum are reputed, respected professionals in their respective fields. I guess we need to be able to exercise self control or self restraint while making professional postings.
Limiting or moderating such fora would mean that we are unsure of our behaviour, unable to contorl feelings, etc.
Once we have moderator, it also means like going back to school days. Remember moniter of the class. We (too step memebers) have crossed all the thresholds & limitations of learning. Now the learning process is more of a knowledge give and take. At too step we are all professionals with good qualifications. so the debate is result of our experience and knowledge.Also debate generated here at toostep is often very good and logical. But at times it takes a turn to emotional outburst.
Let us have guidelines...too much of dos and dont,s will spoil the fabric of basic argumentive nature..of this community users.
Arguments and counter arguments is the debate...
Few gudelines is all we need...common minimum programme....What say?
No comparison should be made between these who talented cricketer.Sunil Gavaskar is now 62 years old while Sachin is 37 years old which means that they played the game of cricket in two different eras.No one must forget that Sunil in his time dominated...
Mr. Murthy, thanks for the invitation to participate in this debate. Firstly I must say that I am no longer making any significant contribution on this site but could not resist this topic. I do believe that everyone is entitled to his views/opinions....
Very nice article....the youths of today should read this. It so sad that children of today hardly take time to stop and think of how hard their parents work so they can have a good life. Thanks for posting.
